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This article is part of a series, based on the book 'Top 21 Marketing methods for membership websites Written by the Subscription Coach Amanda Northcutt.

 Download the whole series as an ebook

Creative marketing opportunities abound during trade shows and conferences. You can pay for an exhibit space, purchase sponsors through the organizer, host an off-site event to coincide with the conference or show, and more.

If you're fortunate enough to find that someone else from your industry is organizing an annual gathering in which your audience is together, you need to be present.

When it comes to organizing an event of your own, taking part in an event which someone else has organized is like hitting the easy button. BUT, if you just attend without a plan and without a plan, it's probably best to remain at at home.

There are often conference/event/trade show sponsorships available for purchase, booths, and other opportunities to get amplified exposure to attendees over what you can accomplish on a one-to-one basis. One of the Holy Grail of event engagement at someone else's event is being a speaker. The topic of speaking engagements will come up in a moment, but as uncomfortable as you may feel at first, public speaking in front of your target group is as powerful as gold. It's a fast path to credibility and confidence, provided the speech you give is compelling, valuable, and relatable.

Assess sponsorship opportunities in similar ways to what you would in any advertising paid for. They should be quantifiable and that's largely on you in the case of a sponsorship for your event. Your presence during the event, your brand experience you create, and the call to action you make will decide the success of your event or lack or lack of. Your strategy for your event should comprise pre-event preparation, an event-specific plan and a follow up sequence. It doesn't matter whether or not you have an official sponsorship. However, it's likely to be more straightforward if you've got one.

Preparation: If you can gain access to and visibility on the attendance list before the event you can move them through the sales pipeline quicker. If you're a corporate sponsor, ask the organizers how to maximize the value of your sponsorship. Ask for more than what is provided in the sponsorship package If you are able to think of a creative method to offer the attendees with value and also make the event look nice.

If you don't have sponsorship or aren't an influencer in your space You're not likely to attract the attention of organizers in any kind of important manner. Get yourself on Twitter as well as Instagram and then using the hashtags to discover others that are attending. Get to know these folks and consider hosting a happy hour, lunch, or a mini-workshop offsite in the days and hours in the days and hours leading up to the main occasion.

The day of: Sponsor or not Find a way to get leads. This can be done on a one-to-one basis by providing a relevant resource or even a deal to an interested prospect in exchange for contact information or permission to follow them on social media. Read the room and don't be pushy or salesy. If you can help someone, tell them they can help and request permission to email them. Taking a second to write an outline of the person you are contacting to create a personalized follow-up message is sure to put you head and shoulders above people who have generic follow-up email messages without personal details.

Track the event hashtag through social media both during the event and afterwards, make sure you use the hashtag your own. That's a free method to increase your visibility and make you more visible to attendees. This is also a great opportunity to identify potential clients or influencers throughout and following the event.

If you hold a booth at a conference, you need a way to make your presence known. This isn't a guru's advice however, you can go to Pinterest and browse for ideas for your creative process. Be noticed, and if your sector is conducive to a little lighthearted fun and entertainment, you should play it up. A good way to achieve this is to have a themed booth and have employees or helpers dress the way they want to dress.

Another thing I've seen successfully is to have employees wandering around asking guests would they like to be invited to an exclusive bar/restaurant to enjoy cocktails following the event. They then have to go to your booth in order to learn more about what you have to offer and then sign up (lead capture) to receive an invitation. If you're doing this, then you must ensure that you have an enjoyable group of people running your booth - people that your prospects actually want to drink with and spend time with. Rent out a popular bar or room in a restaurant in town and pay the tab at the conclusion of the evening. It creates a little excitement (no pun intended) at the event, lets potential customers have an enjoyable experience when they interact in your business and acts as a lead-generating event in person.

Follow up: Your entire preparation and on-site work will go to waste If you don't follow up regarding the follow-up process. Remember, lead capture during the event is essential as you'll be left with enough people to follow up with. Oops.

On the day following the party, send them an individual email with your contact information that you made a notes of your time with them (you already did this, don't you?) Make a connection to them via their preferred social media outlet for the double-edged punch. Do not put off this. You need to profit from the hype surrounding your event as well as momentum. If you postpone this step for more than a week, you've missed the boat. After the personalized email is sent, activate the automatic drip sequence that you created prior to the event. You can do this through your email provider (you have permission to send emails to them, too, right?) and move them through the sales pipeline just as you would a person who has visited your site. But, you've met them in person, so your calls to take (CTAs) must have greater significance (attend a value-packed webinar, begin your trial, or buy) as opposed to someone who only beginning your drip process following the acquisition of the lead magnet from your site.

If you are only capable of handing out cards but not collect names and contact info because of some reason, make your own landing page and include a special lead magnet offer just for conference attendees. Make a specific set of business cards made which include your landing page URL and brief descriptions of the free download you've created just to them on it. Then have your email capture forms on that page to request downloading and start the automated nurture process to follow.

 There's an infinite number of ways to work this, but the key point is that you require an pre- event, post-event, and during plan that is measurable.

Webinars

A webinar is a 45-90 minutes of value-added online seminars which can be broadcast live on the internet to an audience or pre-recorded and consumed upon demand. Webinars are great as top of the funnel sources and email list building tools, but could also be utilized towards the final stage of a sales funnel to solicit a sale.

Webinars can be produced yourself in a single event, or in a series called a summit with or without guests, or even as a guest on someone else's. They can and should be leveraged to display your expertise and build authority and trust within your particular industry. They can be used for a single time, or you can create permanent webinars - the contents of which should be applicable for in the coming 12-24 months.

If you run a closed model with your membership (meaning that you open your site to new members few times in the year) an individual event or summit could be an excellent closing tactic. I'd suggest offering this kind of webinar live and hinting at the possibility of a special, unique and time-sensitive offer within your marketing materials that can only be made available only to attendees who attended live following the session, and not for those who watch the replay. You can still send the replay to people who didn't go live. However, you may be able to improve your attendance live and closing percentage in case your attendees know that something special is happening during the course.

Hosting a summit is one of the best moves you can make to become an authority/influencer. It is essential to have an extensive email list to attract other industry experts as guests and if you manage to succeed, your efforts will be rewarded. This is a lot of work, so I wouldn't recommend doing this unless you are willing to commit to the amount of time required to have your technology, summit promotion guests, guest list, content plans, scheduling, and follow-up completed.

Being a guest on someone who is hosting a webinar and inviting their attendees to participate can be a fantastic way to dip your toe into the water and become comfortable on camera without putting in the time and effort required to host your own. If you're working alongside other companies on cross-promotions, and you have an organic influencer strategy in place, you're more likely to be top of the list of guests for people who host webinars as well as summits.

Similar to fully exploiting the power of a conference or an event, having a pre-webinar marketing strategy and a plan for follow-up is essential. Since webinars and summits are an excellent source of information to your target audience (not to mention a ton of work on your part) be sure that you're repurposing your content from the webinar: turn your webinar content into blog series, ebook podcast, or videos on YouTube, podcasts as a lead-generator, and on.

 The most crucial thing to keep in mind regardless of whether you're hosting or a guest is that you provide an unimaginable quantity of value for participants of your webinar. This isn't the time to hold back your secret sauce. It's moment to show that you've got the recipe that works and you have plenty of other benefits you can find it behind your paywall.

Meetups or events in person

Meetings in-person and meetings could include one of these: holding happy hour, in-person courses/lessons, workshops or sponsorship of in-person events in cities in which a significant portion of your participants reside or any other way you can get people together in real life. Events can be free or paid and educational in nature or just good fun for gatherings that build community.

Many of the membership sites we collaborate with include an online community component within the membership. In the end, community is among the most important differences between a membership and a program. If you're able to bring together your members in person, and host events that your members (and future members) are excited about and later rave about online, you're going to boost sales, cLTV, convert rates and also the strength of your online community.

Events like these are a great place to allow members who are currently or prospectively to meet and talk. Let your current members do their "selling" to you to prospective members through casual chat. If some of your current members value your membership enough to be present in person discussing your membership, it can be an easy topic of conversation.

Like industry conferences or trade shows, you must prepare prior to the event, and make your occasion live up to its hype, and have an action plan for following up. Your prep and follow up depends on the kind of event you're holding.

If it's a workshop, you're likely charging people to attend, and will need to prepare marketing materials, and then the workshop details themselves (workbooks, handouts, a slide deck, your presentation, guest speakers/instructors). Your follow up should include an audience survey as well as bonus material, or the possibility of a discount for some other item. If you've met an individual in person and gained their trust, leverage that momentum into relevant opportunity to upsell them.

If you're hosting a happy hour, little prep work should be necessary. Make sure you choose a good location, serving food or drinks, as well as getting people there. When you're there, interact with the people in attendance, and make sure there's no one absent. The idea of inviting current members to invite a friend who is similar with them is an effective method to increase your attendance as well.

While a happy hour is the last time to sell when you're inviting potential members to join, you should have a clever way of making sure you follow-up with them. Your lead capture could be entry into a contest for the chance to win a membership for free, merchandise, etc., or things like passing the prospect cards with a special promo code on them.

Regardless of the type of occasion you're hosting, be sure to have an approach to lead collection and follow-up with prospects that are in attendance. Just as your membership marketing materials must match what the paying members receive behind the paywall, your promotion for the event must match what you're able to deliver in person , or else you're at risk of being branded a bad name on the internet. Develop raving advocates for your events rather than naysayers in order to be able to hold successful events in the future. It is the perfect opportunity to make use of the underpromise overdeliver principle.

Speaking engagements

Maybe this is more frightening than direct sales to some However, it's incredibly effective in the right way recording, recorded and leveraged. If you're not familiar with public speaking, that's okay. Things like blogging, guest podcasting, hosting or being a guest on webinars, making videos, etc. All of these are great ways to prepare for public speaking.

You don't have to shoot at the stars when you're just starting out. Find a local business association and make a presentation at the event or conduct an in person workshop to a small group. There is even the option of going to the town nearby that you do not know for a presentation if you really want to relax. Begin small and, when your confidence and skill set improves, up level to a bigger job.

Request to host breakout sessions at conferences, host an unofficial breakout session before or after someone else's event (in an ethical manner, naturally). Once you've done those things successfully, start to harness your organic influencer, guest blogging/podcasting/webinar hosting strategies to move further up the speaking ladder. If you're in the loop for pertinent speaking opportunities due to the fact that your network is strong and have put in the time to build the social capital of that group, you'll be much more likely to be invited to be a candidate for a speaking slot even if you're less popular yet.

Speakers who are more prominent have the same value as writing your own book, holding a conference or even a summit with other industry experts in terms of the reach and impact. Whatever the scope of your speaking engagement, you should fully leverage your presentation using it in different media. First make sure you're able to record solid quality video of your talk or presentation. Upload your video on your site, behind and in front of the paywall. Put it up on YouTube, use the content for a blog post series or podcast subject, and use it to seed discussion within your communities, both paid and free as well as embed the video on your website's "About" and "Resources" tab on your website.

 Not to mention, use the video recording to apply to speak at other events. When you've established yourself as a valuable speaker and market your self accordingly by recording a footage of your speech along with some social evidence (positive feedback you received from the audience) and your public speaking life will get a whole lot easier.